That’s pretty much what happened last month when only four people showed up for a Conservative Party primary for a state Senate seat in Queens. Another two mailed in absentee ballots.

While nobody won the write-in vote – all six votes went to noncandidates – there was one sure loser: city taxpayers.

They’ll have to pick up the estimated $30,000 tab for the Sept. 14 election in the 16th Senatorial District, which stretches from Bayside to Flushing to Astoria.

The woman singlehandedly responsible for the unusual election isn’t remorseful. In fact, she says she’d do it again to teach political parties to always fill their ballot lines.

“Democracy is a very expensive business,” said lawyer Frances Scanlon, a registered Republican. “The alternative is not something we should seek to afford.”

Scanlon said she went to the trouble of rounding up the signatures of 49 of the district’s 477 registered Conservative Party members for an opportunity to wage a write-in campaign because both the Republicans and Conservatives were letting Democrat Toby Stavisky get a free ride.

Stavisky is the odds-on favorite to fill the seat that became vacant with the death of her husband, Leonard, in June.

“Doing this is the greatest tribute I can give to Leonard,” said Scanlon. “If you knew Leonard Stavisky, you know he’d say, ‘Way to go, Frances.'”

Tom Long, the Queens Conservative Party leader, said he warned Scanlon about the pitfalls of an unpublicized write-in election.

“According to the election law, there was nothing I could do to stop her,” said Long.

Board of Election officials, who’ve been sued in the past by people demanding the right to conduct a write-in vote, said they have no choice but to conduct an election once presented with a valid petition for an “Opportunity to Ballot.”

But realizing the costs involved, board officials consolidated the 227 election districts into 20 polling sites. That reduced the price from $227,000 to about $30,000.

Still, election officials had to hire about 100 inspectors ($130 a day), supervisors ($200 a day), door clerks ($130 a day), as well as Spanish and Chinese translators, all of whom sat around from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. killing time.

Business was so slow that at least one befuddled inspector thought the entire election was some sort of integrity test, designed to see if inspectors would abandon their posts when no one showed up.

In the end, four of the six votes were thrown out – the two for Giuliani, one for a Chinese organization and one for a Democratic assemblyman.

That meant each valid vote cost $15,000 – and when the election is held Nov. 2, the district still won’t have a state Senate candidate on the Conservative Party line.